h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

How is it done? Is it just a case of popping a note at the bottom of the page? And does one have to use one's real name?

Anybody know?

http://www.eff.org/bloggers/
legal rights for bloggers etc are on here and if you search about should answer what you want.

basically you put a statement on saying you reserve the right for this not to be used elsewhere without your permission.

Anything 'creative' that is recorded in a 'tangible medium' is *automatically* copyrighted. You don't even have to put a notice.

'Creative' covers most things nowadays, and 'tangible medium' does include websites.

But copyright expires after a certain number of years. So it's nice to put the date of creation on a webpage, so people know when it goes out of copyright.

And what if someone writes an article and puts it on the web, and then gradually tweaks it, making a series of small changes? Does copyright expire x number of years after the first creation of the article, or x number of years after the last tweak?

How does this affect h2g2?

Entries record the date of creation. They don't (to my knowledge) record any changes made (unlike Wikipedia and other wikis).

An EG or UG Entry is a copy of the original, so the recorded "date of creation" is a bit off, well ahead of the original version (by a minimum of seven days, and by a maximum of almost anything). And in some cases, the subeditor makes almost no changes, so copyright should be dated from the original Entry, which may now be deleted.

And then there's the other extreme. Teenage Depression A270109 claims to have been created on 8th March 2000. But the large section at the bottom, under the header "A Personal Perspective" was added only a few days ago, as noted at F34059?thread=3282738. In a few years' time, someone could make a copy of that Entry, thinking it to be out of copyright, and then Nirvanite U655167 would have a right to sue them, if he wanted to.

Complicated.

TRiG.

Copyright expires 70 years after the death of the creator (in the EU and USA, at least).

So you certainly don't need to worry about that, Trig!

On the subject of copyright you might like to look at

http://creativecommons.org/

It's an interesting idea